European action on Spanish institutional corruption

Check out this substantial bombshell being chucked at the Spanish establishment at all levels and in all territories for its collective refusal to confront (indeed for its participation in) the flagrant, widespread, long-term abuse of individual property rights. But will the threat of a Bulgarian-style loss of European funds to the common weal be sufficient…

Tibidabo set to music

Little Susie performs “The temptation of Jesus”, which is to say Luke 4:1-13, whereunder, kind-of: Satan mennen l’ yon kote ki wo. Yon sèl kou, li moutre l’ tout peyi ki sou latè. Li di Jezi konsa: M’ap ba ou tout pouvwa ak tout richès peyi sa yo. Yo renmèt tout bagay sa yo nan…

Spanglish, an important new literary language

An interesting piece by the always interesting Ilan Stavans in a new French literary mag on the doormat describes briefly how in the States, with the success of Junot Díaz’s killer novel The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao and other stuff, Spanglish has moved from the rebellious, designed-to-be-misunderstood fringe to the mainstream. What we…

How a right-wing tree became a left-wing tree

Over at Crónica Verde, about the ongoing destruction by the Andalusian PSOE of the Doñana National Park. This is quite different from the abuse of natural space during the dictatorship because (all together now!) Franco was of the right, while Chaves is of the left, and the people’s friend to boot.

De Juana Chaos gets something right

I thought ETA’s man on the run had lost it when he went AWOL from a Subject Nation of an Evil Empire with generally excellent weather to a Subject Nation of an Evil Empire where it never bloody stops raining, just in time for winter. But then it started snowing across northern Spain, and even…

Left/right

Check out the excellent Mr Butler on how our “socialist” government is handing over, more or less for free, a substantial stake in a nominally Spanish energy business to a Russian oil business with allegedly major mafia participation in order to save a big construction company and hence rescue the domestic financial sector from overt…

How to use public service exams to screw your enemies

I struggle to believe that Graeme@South of Watford really believes that the PP is the only rampantly corrupt political party in Spain–maybe I just haven’t read enough of his posts–but here anyway (thanks to El Ciruco) is another nice example of PSOE trough management from their Andalusian fiefdom. One suspects that few politicians here would…

“What is art in Latin countries is obscenity in the Nordic north”

JD had a bit more Time than I did and kindly sent me an article from 1930 which turns the tables on the filthy Swedes discussed this morning. It seems that towards the end of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship the Spanish postal service issued a stamp of Goya’s unshaven maja desnuda. Time writes: The stamps…